In Los Angeles 'water colony', tribes fear a parched future

As climate change brings more drought, California may need to rethink how it uses and shares water MULTIMEDIA PACKAGE: https://packages.trust.org/running-dry/index.htmlBy Laurie GoeringBIG PINE, California, June 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the first white settlers arrived in California's remote eastern Owens Valley, the name given to its indigenous tribes was Paiute, or "land of flowing water" in the local language.

But for more than a century, the water in the valley has flowed in just one direction: toward Los Angeles, nearly 300 miles (480 km) away.In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) quietly bought up broad swathes of ranchland and its associated water rights in the once-lush valley, fringed by snow-capped peaks.Today, Los Angeles owns more than a quarter million acres in Inyo County, at the valley's heart - more than half of all land that doesn't belong to the state or national government.